A firefighter said the fire at the TriTech Lubricants factory in Dandenong South last week was like nothing he’d ever experienced. By Nicole WilliamsTHE fire that completely destroyed a factory in Dandenong South last week was ‘indescribable’ according to the lead firefighter.
Senior station officer Adrian Devonish was in one of the first CFA trucks on the scene and was the incident controller for the 12-hour blaze that demolished the TriTech Lubricants factory on Thursday night.
“After the fire got hold of the warehouse, it was almost indescribable,” Mr Devonish said.
“I’ve been to a number of warehouse fires and factory fires but nothing that compares to the one we experienced the other night.”
Mr Devonish said when crews arrived just after 8pm, the extent of the blaze and it’s challenges were still unclear.
“When you drive up, you don’t know there is oil,” Mr Devonish said.
“You see the smoke and you think it’s a large job.”
He said it soon became clear the fire had started in the front office and it was unsalvageable.
“The office was written off. You just had to stand there and say ‘do nothing about the office, just stop it affecting everything else’,” he said.
But it wasn’t until the crews entered the rear of the factory that the full situation became clear.
“The first third of the warehouse was heavily ablaze. We got entry to the rear of the premises and we realised it was an oil storage facility,” Mr Devonish said.
“We just had to try to save what we could of the neighbouring properties.”
TriTech Lubricants is an oil blending facility so there was more than 500,000 litres of flammable oil on site.
Adding to the complications were pipes at the rear of the property that supply the nearby Viridian Glass factory with nitrogen, hydrogen and compressed air.
“There were a lot of difficulties. Essentially there were three or four testing jobs in the one,” Mr Devonish said.
“Hydrogen was leaking and spurting a large fire from the pipe. We had to take that as an individual job.”
South Metro Region operations manager Trevor Owen said the fire service hadn’t seen a fire like that in a number of years.
“We haven’t had a fire of that significance in about two and a half years,” Mr Owen said.
“It’s certainly not an everyday occurrence.”
At the height of the fire, more than 100 firefighters and 28 fire appliances were battling to control the blaze.
Mr Devonish said both CFA and MFB firefighters did a great job in saving the neighbouring properties.
“The effort of everyone on the ground was fantastic.”
Fire crews were still battling pockets of flames late on Friday morning.
The cause of the blaze is still unknown and police are appealing for witnesses to contact Dandenong Crime Investigation unit on 9767 7487 or Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
